Wow, has IQ dropped sharply since I last posted to Slashdot?
I didn't claim that the plane didn't disappear. Planes crash all the time. I claimed that this story getting constant 'pay attention to me' billing causes people to ignore more substantive stories. 'Manufactured news' isn't a fake story, it's a 'human interest' story that has been deliberately hyped.

While some of the apologists you decry are probably real, it's a safe bet that most of them are sock puppets. There is a thriving market for 'media consulting firms' who take money to provide sock puppet services. I've personally identified quite a few working Slashdot. They already have 'full capture' of this service, and of most online social networks. They are most apt to turn up when someone posts a 'controversial' story, and otherwise try to keep a low profile.

I find the responses from the slashdot crowd telling. While a few people expressed some support, most seemed horrified. That's quite comical, and more than a bit disturbing. It tells me that many slashdot readers have a problem with too much technology, in the same sense as some people have a problem with too much alcohol. Those people would be wise to spend more time outdoors surrounded by greenery, read more books, and turn off their phones for a few weeks every now and then. If the prospect of turning off your phone for a week disturbs you that's a great indicator that you have a problem.

Parent post was also modded down [by NSA sockpuppets]. It went up to a 5, then down, then up again. Then it was stable at a 5 for while. Just now, about an hour after the story was first posted (when traffic to this thread is dropping, and a forum slide has been initiated on the front page) it was quietly modded back down. Who besides NSA sockpuppets would do that? Here's an exercise: how much would it cost to station paid sockpuppet moderators at every popular online watering hole? Is this number more or less than the available budget?

NSA sockpuppets just modded this comment chain DOWN. I watched it go up, then back down. Actually, I'm only guessing the down-modders were NSA sockpuppets, but can you think of anyone else who would do so?

It seems pretty clear that John Gilmore has clearly identified what's going on. He spotted many instances of NSA-directed sabotage,and has called it out.

Of the multiple examples John calls out, the most poignant is probably the needlessly complicated IPSEC standards. Overly complicated standards lead to bugs and flaws. He and Bruce Schneier describe a process that certainly sounds like NSA sabotage of security standards.

What should be the upshot of this? Perhaps people involved in security research should recognize that [b]anyone affiliated with NSA is a likely saboteur[/b]? Is such sabotage, which deliberately cripples the security of USA electronic infrastructure, a form of treason? Since this sort of deliberate sabotage of technology is the sort of thing terrorists might do, perhaps the NSA, and every person associated with that organization, should be placed on a Terrorist Watch List?

In all seriousness, how should the technical and geek community deal with this sort of sabotage? Is it sufficient to respond,or is proactive behavior called for? What would Sun Tzu have to say about this situation?

Are you sure about that? Your understanding of the AI basis for self driving cars may be flawed. Google's AI (not exclusive to Google) is based on 'artificial life' that was 'encouraged' to evolve intelligence more than 20 years ago. It probably qualifies as both 'strong AI' and 'friendly AI'. Computers are the just medium it uses to communicate with us and are not its basis technology. It's called Quantum Neural Network technology (no useful wikipedia entry yet exists), and its basis is non-abelian anyons interacting in a 2DEG. See the complete scientific works of Stuart Kauffman, Steven Wolfram, Robert Laughlin, and David Deutsch for details.The reason you can't read about this new technology is because the original project that developed it was classified, so all derivative technologies (such as Google's self driving cars) are also classified, and all people who work on this technology must sign ironclad NDAs.

Interesting that that comment was modded down. It related directly to the conversation and the article. The hemp advocates might be annoying and sometimes incoherent, but what they say is also, in general, entirely true and correct.

... no matter how much plant matter humans harvest for various reasons, the Earth is able to replenish it to its maximum level.

Nope, the universe does not work that way, no matter how much we would like it to be so. You seem lack a basic understanding of ecological carrying capacity. When any species transgresses the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, it permanently reduces the carrying capacity of that ecosystem. This is basic Biology. The Reindeer of St. Matthew Island illustrate this point very well. In the future, please learn the basics of the topic before spouting off your (un) scientific opinion.

Limits To Growth has never been proven wrong. This lie, originally created by Economists, has been told, and retold, and retold again, and I see it again in that Reason article, which I just read. Same lies! Try this: Go out and buy the original 1973 Limits to Growth book. Read it and look at the numbers. Now get CURRENT data on the same items. Compare. You will find that they match strikingly well.

The anti-Limits to Growth hatchet jobs tend to use the same lies. The standard approach, which is REPEATED in that lame Reason article, is to deliberately misinterpret LTG as predicting stuff it never said, then 'proving' that misinterpretation wrong. It's the standard 'Straw Man' argument, and that wretched Reason article does it AGAIN.

To repeat myself: go out and buy the original 1973 Limits to Growth book, or any of the more recent ones. Read it and look at the numbers. Now get HISTORICAL data on the same items. Compare. You will find that they match strikingly well. Nothing in Limits to Growth has been proven wrong, that is a FALSE MEME that represents a triumph of Disinformation.

The other big trend is the availability of cheap natural gas from fracking, which is driving the construction of new gas electric plants and gas-heating in homes. Fuel oil is expensive; gas is dirt cheap. The simple economics will force a mass conversion to this relatively clean and cheap power source.

You have some factual errors regarding hydraulic fracturing. You have accepted known-false statements as true, due to hearing them repeated many times by a very well funded public relations campaign. Please allow me to correct your (understandable) misconceptions.

1. The availability of cheap gas from fracking is very temporary. We currently have a glut, but don't expect it to last more than a couple years. These reservoirs have a very high decline rate. It is unlikely that we'll see the unusual confluence of circumstances that caused this resource to be overproduced this past few years. By 2017 or so North American natural gas won't be cheap anymore.

2. Natural gas derived from hydraulic fracturing is NOT 'relatively clean'. The actual gas is the same as 'normal' natural gas, but the fracturing process is quite dirty. This (false) claim that fracked gas is 'clean' has been an important aspect of the paid marketing campaign.

3. While I am dispelling marketing-campaign-induced mythology, readers should also be aware that the 'USA will become energy independant' myth is just that, a myth. The numbers don't even come close to adding up. When you hear that myth repeated, you are hearing propaganda.

"This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations." - and note we had already classified it as 'funny'.

Looks like it's time to leave Slashdot. It's been a fine 15 years. So, where's is a comparable, not-controlled-by-our-corporate-overlords place where we geeks can speak freely?

In the 90s I used Dice as my primary resume location, with excellent results. Then they got greedy, and made a bunch of changes that made their service less useful to geeks looking for jobs. For example, they made your resume not-visible externally, such that potential employers had to sign up with Dice and pay them to see your resume. Dice is a greedy entity, and I can't imagine any way they could own Slashdot and not kill it.